How does a writer show an important problem without blatantly telling the readers about the issues? We have images. We have words. We have thoughts and voices. Yet, none of these is adequate to tell the tale of our greatest joys or our horrendous disasters. Take climate change. I talked to a friend recently who commented on the warm, February weather. “Yes,” I said. “It’s so warm that it’s scary with climate changes.” “Oh well,” she continued, “these things come in cycles.” Cycles or not, scientists and environmental advocates tell us that we are at the end times. For 2020, the professionals who measure the Doomsday clock, just set 2020 at 100 seconds to midnight – the demise of humanity and the multitude of species we will take with us. Believe this or not. Like this or not. It makes no difference. The truth is real though we be blind.
I have a second concern: Is a poem “interrupted” when a social or political matter makes its way into part of the body of the poem? I think so. Is it justified to do so? I am not sure. The best I can say is that I’ve done my best to show and tried to keep my “telling” to a minimum.
Six Moths
Arrivals at my window – six winged ones
soon to disappear, but for now
here, sad and fragile splendor
They form a leftward leaning arc
Hawkmoths at the top and bottom
stout curving bodies
masquerade faces with eyes unblinking
six clawed feet probe the screen
Wings – orange and black and a paler peach
Sphinxes of the nether times feast on nectar after dark
thin curled snouts made for sipping, and above
two sets of predator eyes on wings and head
And wings – oh, such wings – swept back and out
like an F15 fighter, jagged flaps on trailing edges
portents of the survival wars upon us
following the loss of the regal Monarch’s 97%
Smaller cousins’ ivory-struck wings flick and flutter,
thin as a whisper and twice as shrouded
In and out of sight behind the sorcerer’s curtain
where we operate the machines of our hubris
and their destruction
On the outward-curving edge hangs a black-winged one
with a Darth Vader helmet
perhaps the very last of their kind
despite the veil of their cloaking wings
Will, they, too, follow the orange-brilliant monarchs
into the dust of our regrets
Pale purple wings rest at the reversed curve’s right
leaning lively with their vibrant flitters
The largest flaunts her whore’s whirling boa
swirling wings-white, burnt orange, and black
antennae waving round and up like a dancer’s arms
that drop the robe of blameless virginity
The tiniest of all – like a sliver of a silver fingernail
tracks a path from the bottom of the screen
on thin wobbling legs poking through screen squares
like a lonely child climbing a mountain home
until reaching the left wingtip of the whore-mother
there nestling still as a sleeping baby
All six trembling toward the coldest end of ends
like all of us
on our blue-gray sphere eroding and burning our least farewells
dancing on the brink, flying willing toward our goodbyes
and the six gone long before from the window screen
Will the burning air take six of them asudden?
one at a time, or all together?
even now, they are leaving us
under our own idle hands on our failed watch
Could it be that the tiniest white flyers might save us all?
if our attention turned in their direction?
Unlikely
as we accelerate the burning
singeing precious wings
like Icarus who defied his father’s warning
The sun stays still as we grow more trivial
we witness the shedding of our ice, our forests, our living waters
while the echoes of the hummingbirds’ chirps fold into memory
and the sphinx moths’ relics lie swept by desert sands
Still as arriving death
we stare amid our abundance
committing genocide against their tribes
unsated until we’ve lost the last of you
crushing their smothered colors
We, too, cling to our window world probing screen holes
without knowing how or why we cling
At our core lies the knowing
that the trembling splendor needs our compassion
but we lack the sight to apprehend our own undoing
They are born and reared for take-offs, rarely landing
Harrier-like, straight up, fighters
Yet, we shut the window trapping them – leaving them
to their soundless dying
One by one they drop to the nether casing
fluttering, grounded, unaware, uncomplaining
Turn off the light of their attraction
Close the window revoking their intention
I’ve written now – I walk away
Somewhere, someone stands up and their eulogies say
Background:
I live in Beltrami Island Forest, thirty miles south of Manitoba. We’ve been here since 1999. Maybe it’s my imagination. Maybe it’s my fear. Either, both, or something else, when we took up residence here, the Monarch butterflies used to fly through the Forest by the hundreds; now, it’s a fortunate occurrence to see two or three at once. Many people this far north say they enjoy our warmer winters; I say we should be afraid of this warming. Apparently, the melting polar ice caps have no relevance for some. Fishers and martens, a relatively common sight in the past, now pass through on the odd occasion. We haven’t seen a bobcat for many years. We used to see their babies. The wolf packs are still here, perhaps only because it is against the law to kill them.
Exploration 1: Do you find the above poem and “background” exaggerated?
Exploration 2: What is your opinion of the scientifically proven decline and extinction of hundreds (thousands?) of species?
Exploration 3: If climate change and its impacts are actual, what is your contingency plan? Or is that a problem for future generations?
I think if we give Al Gore even more money he will solve all our problems, or at least fly to a conference where people who make millions warning the world about climate change will meet to agree with each other.
ReplyDeleteI try not to delve into a doomsday perspective. It seems as though we are rushing into oblivion, but what is there to do about it? Against it? As I recycle in Wannaska, doing my bi-monthly duty toward environmental concern, I have but to realize the millions of individuals who don't; and I'm ignorant as to what becomes of my recycling efforts after I drive away, other than it perhaps just becoming a part of a gigantic plastic floating island somewhere in the South Pacific, on which gulls rest between California and New Guinea, or that shadows sunken merchant marine vessels on the ocean floor sunk by Japanese subs in WWII. What's the point, really?
ReplyDeleteWhen I've flown, I try to get a window seat. The earth below tells its story in slow miles, even as we fly above at 600 mph. I see the etchings and swirls of glacial tracks played out diagonally across the designations of latitudinal and longitudinal lines of highways, railroad tracks, fence lines and fields. I study the immensity of the Great Lakes below its waters glistening in the sunlight, remember our 2003 flight across the Atlantic ocean on the way to Ireland, and only recently renewed my eyes to the farm dotted vast plains of the Midwest, the forests of the eastern seaboard, and know these are but specks on this great earth; how can this be we are approaching doomsday now?
What becomes of our writing? Of our treasured libraries, the memorials we've built to ourselves? The recognition we gain, the criticisms that educated us; cities, buildings, people whom we hold dear after we've 'walked on'? No one will be left to remember us, nor them.
I liken this loss to what the Native peoples suffered after European contact, and the totally unbelievable loss of their lives and liberty as a direct result, although they survived and have thrived despite it. I can't imagine the pain or horror of the apocalyptic catastrophe we called, "The Dust Bowl," when the Great and Northern Plains literally lifted into the sky in May of 1934, and darkened it all the way to New York City, and even coated ships on the Atlantic ocean with its dust. This was only 58 years after Custer's Last Stand and 44 years after Wounded Knee. There were people still alive who had witnessed both events -- and then to see the oceans of grass that fed millions of bison there since eternity disappear as clouds, can our doomsday vision be any more terrible?
As I've often written, I listened to CBC for 30-years, many of which while commuting the 40-miles round trip to work and home. I remember listening to the Inuit residents of Nunavat, talk with some degree of amazement about the different birds they were seeing that they never had seen or heard about before. Ice had become late to form, days were becoming longer, all a suggestion of climate change.
I am disappointed that our American President and all of the governing bodies in our country aren't taking immediate steps to limit our dilemma. One day, some building housing all the politicians who are left, even several who could not affect change, try as they might, will be seen heating the building with bales of useless paper money. People will be wandering around Washington DC, hungry, when one of them suggests going to the stock market building for groceries; another asks, "What's the stock market?"
Maybe people in Minnesota will still be able to eke out an existence. We can only hope.
First, many thanks for your extensive comment. It’s good to know others are out there thinking about our home world. Yes, the “rush to oblivion” is definitely picking up its pace. Yes, I too, as you know, have been awe-struck in flight, between our Earth and the stars. The approach of Doomsday is well-hidden – not in the news much – denied by millions right up to the White House. As far as our writing and other great works of art, they will certainly be ashes in the wind. Anyway, we have the hubris to think they are worth anything contrasted with the work to be done at home. (Oh, re: recycling – 9% of the U.S. population recycles.) Your comparison of the loss we are now experiencing to the Native losses (not to mention the other indigenous peoples of the world) is right on target. Yet, we haven’t learned from their tragedies – probably because we thought, and continue to think, that we are the “winners,” the conquerors. Of what? For what purpose? For what legacy?
DeleteIs there hope? I say, no chance for the ridiculously over populated planet. But actually, the large open spaces in Minnesota – and dare I say, in the north of the state – might stand a chance. As you describe, certainly those who are left will be concerned with survival, and one can hope with community.
Thanks again for your cogent comments. Right on the (irrelevant) money.
I recently read Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything." Great book about the Universe and us. We're overdue for a meteorite to hit earth and cause another mass extinction. There have been six great extinctions already. Ninety-nine percent of all species that have ever existed on earth are now extinct. Of the ten or so million species currently in existence, only 15 per cent have been described.
ReplyDeleteWe're overdue for the caldera under Yellowstone to explode. That would also cause a mass extinction. We're overdue for another ice age. Ice ages move slowly so we'd have time to move south. It would be terrible though for Minnesota property values.
Despite all bad things that might happen, we should clean up our acts the best we can. It's good for the soul.